Accountability for Human Rights Atrocities in International Law: Beyond the Nuremberg Legacy

The book's target audience is, then, not primarily international lawyers but 'human rights advocates, regional specialists, civil servants in governments and international organizations, and others in the human rights community' for whom it aims to 'render the [relevant] material approachable' (pp xlix-l). The emphasis is thus on the 'macro' of isolating criteria for successful national prosecutions in transitional societies, not the 'micro' of how highly-developed judicial systems have navigated international law's complexities in isolated cases. In Cambodia the authors endorse views that an international tribunal would have been preferable for trying Khmer Rouge leaders, at least at the outset in 1999 when 'the neglected and corrupt nature of the Cambodian court system rendered it unable, even with international assistance, to conduct fair proceedings' (p 350). The authors conclude that successful national prosecutions require an adequate legal and physical infrastructure, trained lawyers, a rule of law tradition that respects judicial independence and popular support (sometimes emboldened by foreign prosecutions) (p 373).